CIVICUS Monitor update on Belgium - February 2018

Earlier in January, the Danish press reported that many doctors were refusing to prescribe medicinal cannabis despite it now being legal under a four-year trial that started on 1 January. In the first month of the new...

An Estonian court has reversed a lower court's decision and granted in-family adoption rights to a lesbian couple.

President Andrzej Duda says Poland has the right "to defend historical truth" and he is ready to sign the controversial Holocaust bill despite diplomatic rows with Israel and the US. Duda defended the legislation,...

We cannot help but praise the work of the security service and the journalists who made the story public. What we do loathe: the fact that the government abuses the story for political gain.

From smear campaigns to funding restrictions, governments across the EU are increasingly trying to silence human rights defenders. As the European Parliament prepares to debate the issue, Liberties offers its recommendations to improve the situation.

A year after his first visit, Italy's national guarantor of the rights of people deprived of liberty went back to Lampedusa and uncovered the same intolerable living conditions that he had previously reported.

For the first time, a woman will be trained as a marine, the elite soldier of the Dutch Navy. The course was opened to women in January 2017 by then Minister of Defense Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert. For 351 years prior...

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has just published the report on its visit to Lithuania. Even though fewer and fewer people find themselves in detention, many convicts and detainees are still held...

Ahead of Safer Internet Day on 6 February 2018, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) had to be evaluated and possibly amended. Merkel made this announcement in a video...